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he is just so tired.
maybe that’s why he climbs up to the astronomy tower alone. it’s just for a breath of fresh air, really, that’s the lie he keeps telling himself. a moment alone in the sky. just a little bit of peace, that’s all he needs, the kind of peace you can’t get down in gryffindor tower. up here, there is nobody to see through each fake smile, nobody to stop and scold him for sulking when everybody else is having a good time. up here, he can just be himself – whoever himself may be.
it’s a good question, now that he considers it. who is james potter when he’s alone? when he has nothing and nobody to laugh about? when there’s no punchline to his jokes? without moony and wormtail and padfoot, who is prongs? can he even exist at all, if nobody is there to see him perform?
it’s like that thought experiment, he thinks to himself, one of the conundrums his father used to recite during lulls in dinner conversation. if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? he remembers receiving the puzzle when he was younger and scoffing at the very suggestion. sound is not subjective; the falling tree will create sound waves no matter who is around to perceive them. he’d known, even so many years ago, that from a scientific standpoint it was a ridiculous question. the tree will make a sound every time.
now, though? he knows now what it is to put on a show. how it feels to bury your heart under somebody else’s laughter and pray you’re good enough to earn it again. he thinks maybe he ought to go and apologise to the tree, rotting somewhere in a forest untouched by human hand, for ever undermining its silent suffering. but he can’t do that, because he’s a person and it’s hypothetical foliage, so he’ll just have to settle for contemplating the alternative question: if james is suffering and no one is around to notice, does it matter how he feels?
it is these thoughts that drive him to the balustrades. the grounds sprawl out almost sixty metres below, grass dusted in starlight and weighed down by silver dew. there is no glass, no shield, nothing to keep him alive but a stone parapet broken by thick marble pillars. he swings one leg over the barrier. hesitates, swings it back. hesitates again.
he’d known he was going to die tonight. known it from the start. it was one of his best jokes, honestly, that he’d always been fated to die on halloween; most likely pulling some half-baked prank with sirius, toilet-papering the whomping willow or tormenting the bloody baron, whatever the most amusing way to go out would be. not like this. this wasn’t how the joke was supposed to go.
but maybe… maybe he should stay. listen to the lies he’d used to climb the steps and drag himself back down them again. hurry back to the halloween party and cartwheel through the fat lady’s portrait. crack jokes and grin till there’s a phantom ache in the corners of his lips. that would be the right thing, the kind thing to do. to stay, and stay silent, and hold back the shock-waves that would spiral through hogwarts castle without him. he knows how much he holds up, knows how much he means to so many people in this world. his friends. his family. his parents.
oh god, his parents.
in a way, he thinks this is the curse of being an only child. he is the eldest and the youngest son, the pride and the pillar, the success story for his parents to pass around. that’s not to say it’s their fault that he feels like this – they were wonders, each in their own perfect ways – but he is sharp enough to know that they need him as much as he needs them. that they’d be wrecked without him. there is no fallback plan if he falls, no take two if everything is too much for him to bear. he is their everything.
(james, at least, will never suffer from self-worth issues. he is worth too much for that.)
some days the pressure makes him feel like atlas. other days he understands, no, he is heracles; taking the burden of the sky willingly in an effort to appease everybody else, then shocked when nobody wishes to reclaim their share of the load. it is his own fault, though, that he is to be crushed beneath it when his arms give out – nobody else’s. they did not ask him to bite off so much more than he could chew. they did not force this weight onto his shoulders. that was all him.
what would happen, he wonders, if atlas were to let his burden fall? would he feel for those pulverised beneath it; or would he find himself lacking in empathy in his last moments? maddened, maybe, by the impossible state he lives in – or uncaring, in death, about the devastation he would leave behind. is it okay not to care about those he loves, now that he doesn’t have to watch them suffer any longer? does it honestly matter if he cares at all? he will be dead by morning, after all. why waste his final moments worrying about everybody else?
(in his heart, he already knows that is exactly what he’ll do. you do not break the habits of a lifetime so easily.)
but he’s so tired of being heracles. or atlas, with the weight he bears, or phaethon, with the hubris he bore it under; no matter who, he is suffering. silent as a tree. he knows this is the wrong answer, knows he needs to go back and tell somebody before it’s too late, but the damning sky has driven away any last urges to stand up and fight. he’s so tired of getting back up. he just wants to fall.
it is so easy to hoist himself over the balustrade. so easy to balance on the very edge, the last sliver of stone between him and his demise. admittedly, he can’t quite manage to look down; too afraid that he’ll picture himself at the bottom and back out last minute. he wonders, distantly, when he will be found, and murmurs an apology to whoever ends up finding him. he can’t imagine it’ll be a pretty sight.
it shouldn’t be this easy to fall. he should be terrified, paralysed, frozen – but he’s not. even his reflexes have abandoned him at the last moment, it seems. he lets go of the banister without a second thought, twisting in place as he does; the night sky is beautiful tonight, and he wants something beautiful now, to hold onto as he goes. then he tilts back, slowly, as freely as if he's leaning on an invisible wall. but he isn't. there is nothing to catch him as he drops.
i’m sorry, he whispers to the stars. i was just so tired.
at 11:59 p.m., james potter falls from the hogwarts astronomy tower. nobody hears him hit the ground.